what I've been eating

I'm not ready to start posting recipes yet, but I thought it would be fun to have another installment of "what I've been eating." In the last week I've had...

Roasted chestnuts - this is the only time of year I ever see fresh chestnuts in the store, so I got about half a pound to try them out. I liked them best fresh from the oven, but cold is ok. They definitely have a unique flavor and texture.

Fresh pomegranate - this is the time of year for fresh pomegranates, too, and I find popping the seeds out of the membranes oddly satisfying. Not an activity to do while you're wearing a white shirt though, which I learned the stupid way.

Turkey stock - I finally FINALLY figured out how to make good tasting chicken or turkey stock. Ugh, took me long enough. This will get a recipe post by itself at some point. The batch I made this week was made with turkey legs and it turned to gel in the fridge. I get a kick out of that every damn time.



Hash - I made the turkey stock and had a bunch of leftover meat I picked off the bones, so I made some kind of hash using turkey meat for lunch almost every day. My favorite one was purple potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, garlic, turkey thigh meat, and cubed country style pate (storebought) that I cooked in butter.



Chicken Normandy - I got the recipe from Simply Recipes. Basically chicken cooked with loads of apples, onions, and heavy cream. Absolutely delicious.



The leftover sauce made its way into a hash the next day, along with some bacon.

Pork with sauerkraut mashed potatoes - this was a recipe from The New German Cookbook. Pork tenderloin poached in my homemade turkey stock and white wine, along with potatoes mashed with wine-spiked sauerkraut, bacon, and caramelized onions. The potato stuff was great and the pork was very tender, although I wish it had been fattier.



Braised beef shank - basically one of my old recipes, although I have since added some tweaks for maximum deliciousness. The major thing is to take the cooking liquid and boil it down until it's reduced by about half and then thicken it up with a little arrowroot to make it like gravy. Then mix the shredded beef/marrow back into it. Also you can do it in a crockpot on low for 8 hours. We had it with lemony sweet potatoes (recipe from Nourishing Traditions, containing loads of butter, lemon, and egg yolks) and buttered green beans.



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I've also had too much birthday cake and German gingerbread, but we shan't speak of these things...

A very shrimpy new year

Hello little blog, how have you been? I've been busy moving and visiting family over the holidays, but now I'm ready to get back to updating you. In fact, my only resolution this year is actually to blog more often! So let's get to it.

I found a nice looking bag of frozen, unpeeled shrimp at my new grocery store (since moving I've swapped a Whole Foods for a Wegman's) and decided what the heck - I don't do a lot of seafood, but I always feel like I should, and shrimp seem a rather unthreatening place to start. I know shrimp overcook pretty easily, so I wanted to make something where I could just drop them in in the last few minutes. My standby curry seemed a good place to start, both for the ease of cooking and for the fact that the strong curryness would hide the seafoody shrimpyness. Yes I'm a wimp.

Curry is one of my favorite go-to meals when I don't really feel like cooking. All it requires you to have on hand are a can of coconut milk, a jar of curry paste, whatever random assortment of veggies you have languishing about, and some kind of meat. The basic instruction is: brown onions in coconut oil, add in all the other ingredients, simmer 20 minutes.



GO-TO CURRY shrimpy style
serves 3 maybe

The culprits today:
copious amounts of coconut oil
half a large onion
2 tiny sweet potatoes
1 stalk of celery
a can of coconut milk
a small jar of green curry paste
1/2 cup frozen peas
huge handful of baby spinach
1 lb shrimp

I heated the coconut oil in a big skillet and set the onions, sweet potatoes and celery to browning. Then I added the curry paste and let it fry for a minute until it got fragrant, followed by the can of coconut milk, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Then I stirred in the peas and spinach until the spinach started to wilt, followed by the shrimp. Watched it like a hawk and removed it from the heat just when the shrimp turned pink. Done! Served it with lemon wedges to spruce it up a little bit.



To be very strictly paleo you wouldn't want to use the peas or possibly the sweet potatoes, but like I said - just add whatever veggies you have in the house and it'll be fine. My curry is different every single time I make it! If I'm using a different, longer-cooking meat such as chicken, I usually add in at the same time I add the coconut milk.

Since the shrimp I bought needed to be peeled, I was left with a big pile of shrimp shells. I decided to try making some shrimp stock. I have no idea how this tastes yet, and frankly I'm a little leery of it (eww seafood!), but I'm determined to find some way to eat it this week.



I read a few recipes online and amalgamated them to this:

SHRIMP STOCK

shells and tails from 1 lb of shrimp
1/4 of an onion, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1/2 a big carrot, chopped
a few sprigs of parsley
1 small lemon, sliced
1 bay leaf
5 whole peppercorns
1/2 tsp sea salt
water to cover

I combined everything in a smallish pot and brought it to a boil. Skimmed the foam, reduced the heat, and let it simmer for an hour.

Now I have this:



And no idea what to do with it! Please don't say seafood soup, I can't think of anything more horrifying.

In the meantime, maybe I'll start cooking some stuff out of my shiny new cookbooks.



The Whole Beast - Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson and The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearlessly-Eatsitall. I can't wait! Happy New Year everyone!

Apple glazed turkey breast

I've been loving the fall food lately, if you can't tell. :) I think fall definitely has my favorite foods and favorite flavors! The glaze, or sauce, in this recipe really makes otherwise dry turkey breast very moist and delicious.



serves 2

2 turkey breast cutlets, 4-6 oz each
1/4 cup apple juice (or the juice of 1 medium/large apple)
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 T fresh tarragon, minced
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp of arrowroot powder, optional

Make the sauce by whisking the apple juice, chicken stock, garlic, tarragon and ginger together in a small bowl.

Heat a heavy bottomed skillet over medium high heat until good and hot. Add enough olive oil that your meat won't stick (I used about 1T in my cast iron). Salt and pepper the turkey cutlets and sear 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a plate.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the sauce to the pan. Stir to loosen any bits from the bottom, and when the sauce comes to a boil add the turkey cutlets back to the pan. Cook for a few more minutes until the turkey is done through and the sauce has boiled down. If the sauce has boiled down too far, add a little more chicken stock. To tighten up a loose sauce, dissolve the arrowroot powder in 1T cold water, whisk into the sauce and simmer until thickened.

recipe inspired by Low Carb High Flavor Recipes Made Easy by Fiona Carns

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Along with the turkey, we had some steamed broccoli that I just lightly salted and then drizzled with a little cold pressed macadamia nut oil. We also had pumpkin mashed potatoes, which I made by mashing together a mixture of 1/2 white potato and 1/2 pumpkin and then adding salt, chicken stock, a little fresh grated ginger and a little extra virgin olive oil (woulda been better with butter, but it was still good!). If potatoes aren't for you, you could use cauliflower instead.

Primal Challenge days 6, 7, and 8

Got too caught up this weekend to blog, but I took pictures of my food and stuff. :)

day 6

weight: 133.2 (-0.4, net -3.2)
exercise: none

breakfast: none


lunch: Went to a Korean buffet. Loaded up on meat that we grilled at the table plus a bunch of little veggie side dishes (banchan). We shared all the meat in the pic (pork belly is on the grill! yum) and all the veggies (plus another smaller plate) and had some orange slices for dessert. Also we had two dipping sauces for the meat that were super salty - I think one was fermented bean paste and the other was soy sauce based. I know the soy sauce probably had wheat in it, but I didn't care for today. :)

dinner: We were so full from lunch we didn't have dinner.


dessert: Strawberry ice cream (coconut milk, frozen strawberries, little spoonful of honey) - it got so thick it burned out the motor of the ice cream maker. :( No more ice cream for me! Tasted really good though.

beverages: green tea, water

**The Korean BBQ got me temporarily obsessed with Asian food. I got some cookbooks out of the library and it influenced my cooking for the next few days.

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day 7

weight: 134.6 (+1.4, net -1.8) This was water weight from the extreeeemely salty Korean food.
exercise: walked 2 miles in the middle of the afternoon and got a little burnt

breakfast: none


lunch: Out at a BBQ joint. I got beef brisket with mint cucumber salad, collard greens, cole slaw, and pickles. Also had a handful of peanuts in the shell and some unsweetened iced tea. Pic from my camera phone because I forgot my camera.

snack:
1/4 cup roasted unsalted almonds
2 tiny dried peach halves


dinner: Leftovers. Hubby had leftover stew from Friday night and salad. I chopped up some veggies that were kicking around the bottom of the fridge (cabbage, bell pepper, scallions, mushrooms) and sauteed them with a little tamari (wheat-free soy sauce) and rice wine. Drizzled with sesame oil off the heat. Fried two eggs and put them on top of the veggies along with some furikake (Japanese condiment you're supposed to sprinkle on rice - this one has some freeze dried veggies and seaweed).

beverages: iced black tea, green tea, water

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day 8

weight: 133.6 (-1, net -2.8) Lost most of the water weight. :)
exercise: walked 3.75 miles in the OMG HORRIBLE HEAT - it should be against the law for it to be in the 90s before noon

breakfast: none


lunch:
cod fillet marinated in a splash each of tamari, mirin, and rice vinegar along with some grated ginger and 1/2 tsp miso
mixed sauteed veggies (cabbage, daikon, mushrooms, scallions) with tamari, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, furikake


dinner: Homemade Korean BBQ spread!
daeji bulgogi (pork bulgogi) - I got the thin sliced pork from the Korean grocery store and made my own marinade
2 kinds of jarred kimchi
toasted seaweed sheets
3 kinds of homemade banchan - daikon salad, mung bean sprouts, mystery greens from the Korean store - all made with some combination of sesame oil, sesame seeds, red pepper flakes, garlic, scallions, rice vinegar, and salt

also 5 cherries for dessert

beverages: green tea, rooibos tea, water

I got the recipes for the daeji bulgogi and banchan from a book I got out of the library called Eating Korean by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee. I actually have a daeji bulgogi recipe I usually use, but I decided to try the one from the book today. I think I like my other daeji bulgogi recipe better, but the banchan rocked. :)

Sadly though, I am puffed up like a balloon tonight. My tummy did not like something I ate. I am suspecting either soy or sesame, since I don't normally eat either of them and I've been eating them both every day for 3 days. Bah humbug. I was enjoying my Asian food kick.

Primal Challenge Day 3 plus steak fajita and tomatillo salsa recipes

weight: 135 lbs (no change)

breakfast: none


lunch:
*leftover beer-marinated steak
*salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrot, celery, cucumber, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and ground cherries - I've never had ground cherries before but I got them in my CSA and had no idea what to do with them so I threw them in the salad. They were good! Kinda tomatillo-y.
*roasted unsalted almonds
*mug of black tea

snack: none


dinner:
*beef fajita strips
*avocado tossed with sea salt and lime juice
*spicy tomatillo salsa
*sliced tomato with sea salt, black pepper, and exra virgin olive oil

dessert: none

For the fajitas I mostly used this recipe for the marinade: http://www.texascooking.com/recipes/fajitamar1.htm, but I added a jalapeno and a handful of cilantro and a splash of triple sec. I marinated 1.5 lbs skirt steak in it all afternoon, then patted it dry and seared it in a cast iron skillet for 5 minutes on each side. While the meat rested, I poured the leftover marinade back into the pan and let it bubble down a little as I scraped the bottom. Then I sliced the steak and tossed it back in the pan and heated it in the reduced marinade for about 2 minutes. It was great!

I also made some spicy tomatillo salsa because I needed to use up some tomatillos that we got in our CSA. I used this recipe from Rick Bayless: http://topchefs.chef2chef.net/recipes/rbayless/roasted-tomatillo-salsa.htm It is really killer! Super spicy and a great flavor. I think I followed it exactly, for once.

I've been having tomatoes as side dishes a lot because we get them in our CSA and cooked tomatoes give me heartburn.

exercise:
Went to the county parks and recreation website and found a public pool. Paid $8 and swam a few laps then soaked up some sun. Yay vitamin D! Also, I suck at swimming and found it unreasonably exhausting. I could only do 1 full lap without stopping. After that I had to stop halfway across the pool each time. Even so I only managed 4.5 laps. Well you gotta start somewhere, right?

Also I walked 1.5 miles. My butt is sore today from all the walking I did yesterday. Shrink butt, shrink!

Primal Challenge Day 2

I think I'm going to do most measurements weekly rather than daily, but I will track my weight daily.

weight: 135 lbs (-1.4)

breakfast: none


lunch:
salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrots, celery, cucumbers, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
topped with leftover steak from last night's dinner
roasted unsalted almonds
primal limeade - water, lime juice, stevia


snack:
chai - coconut chai teabag, heavy cream, stevia
homemade beef jerky
1 oz cheddar cheese


dinner:
barbecue skillet - onions and cabbage browned in ghee, kielbasa, chicken, pinch of bbq rub, 2T of bbq sauce, topped with shredded cheddar


dessert:
baked raspberries and peaches topped with grated dark chocolate and mint leaves; I used a 6oz container of raspberries and 1 peach for 2 people

exercise:
4.3 miles of strenuous walking, part of it uphill. Really got my heart rate up and the sweat was pouring off me!

Primal Challenge Day 1

Age: 26
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Weight: 136.4 lbs
Waist at narrowest point: 27 in
Waist at navel: 30.5 in
Hips: 36 in

Breakfast:
none


Lunch:
Large salad - butter lettuce, radicchio, carrot, celery, squid, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
cherries
roasted unsalted almonds
primal lemonade - water, lemon juice, stevia


Snack:
Homemade beef jerky (this batch didn't turn out very well or I'd give you the recipe)


Dinner:
Beer marinated flap steak
Cucumber salad with parsley, mint, extra virgin olive oil and rice vinegar
Sliced tomato with salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil


Dessert:
87% dark chocolate
peppermint/lemongrass/ginger tea

Exercise:
bodyweight workout that I modified from Son of Grok that I did for 7 minutes - 5 pushups, wall sit for 10 seconds, 20 jumping jacks, 5 stand ups, rest 30 seconds
walked about 1.5 miles

So, you may have noticed that sneaky little word in my big lunch salad...squid?! Well I was at Whole Foods yesterday and as usual I walked by the seafood counter on my way to the butcher case. I usually give it a desultory glance and move on. Yesterday, I noticed a pretty little pile of meat and tentacles at a shockingly low price and I felt a kind of madness steal over me. Before I knew what was happening I found myself telling the fish guy to give me half a pound of squid. I've never bought or cooked squid before in my life. I ended up broiling it, but I think I must have cooked it too long because it got a little rubbery. It was fine tossed in my salad though since I drowned it out with bacon and balsamic vinegar. :)

The steak recipe I used for dinner is reallllllly good. The marinade does include beer though, so if wheat=death for you it might not be your cup of tea.

Overall, I think day 1 has been a success. :)

One Local Summer Week 6 - Pork Chili Verde

I got busy with holiday stuff last weekend and missed out on making a One Local Summer meal, so I'm getting back into the swing of it this week. We have lots of good local food in the house right now - picked up a freezer full of meat from my Polyface Farm dropoff this weekend, bought some nice fruit at the Columbia Pike Farmer's Market today, and I still have a few things leftover from my CSA dropoff last Monday.



This week it seemed like the farmer's market was full of peppers, squash and tomatoes. I already had squash and garlic at home from my CSA, so I went with the peppers today and decided to make some chili verde. I got peppers and onions from Westmoreland Vegetables (couldn't find a website for them) and tomatillos from another farmer's market stand that didn't have a sign and I don't know what the name of the farm was. The lard, pork and chicken stock are all Polyface.


(the squash isn't in the picture, I forgot it in the fridge! it was green and just about the size of my forearm)

PORK CHILI VERDE

ingredients:
2 T lard
1 onion, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
2 cubanelle peppers, chopped
2 Anaheim peppers, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
6 tomatillos, chopped finely
1 green summer squash, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb ground pork
2-4 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like it)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp dried oregano or 2 T fresh oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Heat the lard in a Dutch oven and brown all the vegetables except the squash and garlic until they start to get soft. Add the garlic and cook for a minute until fragrant. Add the pork and cook until no longer pink. Add the chicken stock and seasonings, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 1 hour.

Some good non local toppings: fresh cilantro, diced avocado, lime juice



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For dessert I cracked open that big ole watermelon you see up top and cubed it up and we went to town. Seeds everywhere. Ugly, but good. :)

a bunch of old meal pics

I was going through some of my old pictures today and I found some that I took before I started my blog. I don't intend to really write any of them up as individual posts, but I thought people might be interested in seeing them to get ideas. If you want to see them in a bigger size just click on the picture.


Steak, mustardy mushrooms, salad with almonds and I think tahini dressing.


Blended salad soup. It was, um, an experiment. An experiment gone horribly awry.


Shopping haul.


Fried eggs, blackberries and strawberries with mint, sauerkraut, cucumbers with a drizzle of olive oil.


Ribeye steak, raw fennel salad, roasted green beans and potatoes.


Salmon on a bed of collards cooked with onions and cranberries, garnished with grated carrots and pea shoots. I remember trying to make this picture look fancy but I don't remember why!


Tuna salad and pea shoots wrapped in nori seaweed and a salad with walnuts and tahini dressing.


Pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce, sauteed red cabbage, parsley soup. I remember my applesauce recipe for this was awesome (maybe I'll dig it out and post it), but the parsley soup was kind of gross.


Scrambled eggs topped with bacon and a side salad topped with Trader Joe's balsamic frozen veggie mix.


Fried egg with parsley on top of braised swiss chard.


Fried egg on top of sauteed mixed veggies, walnuts and a pear.

Coconut chicken fingers with spicy fruit chutney

One of the foods my husband and I really miss on the paleo or primal diet is breaded chicken. It's just soul satisfying comfort food for both of us. I do make a gluten free, grain free version of chicken fingers with almond flour sometimes, but tonight I thought I'd try something different. Keeping with the coconut theme I've had lately, I decided to dredge the chicken in unsweetened dried shredded coconut. I didn't want them to be naked, so I wanted to make a sauce, but pan sauce or gravy didn't seem right - so I decided to make a spicy fruit chutney. The result is a tropical dish that's just right for these hot summer evenings!



COCONUT CHICKEN FINGERS
serves 2

ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast cut into large strips (4-5 per breast depending on if they have the tenders attached or not)
2-3 T coconut flour
1-2 eggs, beaten (start with 1 and use the second if you start to run out)
1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1 tsp sea salt
coconut oil for cooking

Set up a dredging station with 3 bowls, one for coconut flour, one for egg, one for shredded coconut. Season the coconut flour with the salt.

Dredge each chicken finger first in coconut flour, then egg, then shredded coconut.

Heat a bunch of coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet over medium/medium-high heat. Cook the chicken fingers until golden brown on each side. Do it in more than one batch if necessary and keep cooked chicken fingers warm on a foil lined baking sheet in an oven set to the lowest setting.

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SPICY FRUIT CHUTNEY
serves 4

2 cups of diced and peeled plums or nectarines or a mixture of the two
1/4 cup lemon juice
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
2 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced
2 small dried red chili peppers (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup sweet white wine
pinch of sea salt
pinch of stevia, optional depending on if your fruit is really sour (taste before you add!)

Mix everything together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes until thick. Discard dried chilis and cinnamon stick. Can be eaten warm or cold.

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating.

One Local Summer - Week Four

One of the nice things about blogging on my own schedule is that I can wait until I have something good to show you before posting about it. Since I'm not posting on my on schedule with this One Local Summer thing, this week you get to see some of my blah food.



I guess it doesn't look too bad, but it was just meh. We had green onion burgers made with ground beef from Smith Meadows Farms, lots of green onions from our CSA and held together with an egg from our CSA. On the side was a little slaw made with kohlrabi and basil from our CSA and a touch of extra virgin olive oil and vinegar. We also had some lovely golden zucchini from Red Rake Farm with some more CSA basil, sauteed up with a little lard that I rendered from Polyface pork fat. Nothing was bad exactly, but there is nothing here I would make again.

The golden zucchini I got from Red Rake Farm were so pretty. The guy told me that the day before they had been about an inch or two long and they literally quadrupled in size overnight!



I hope he has some more next week so that I can find something yummier to do with them. :) In the mean time, check out what other Southern folks are getting up to this summer at last week's roundup.

One Local Summer - Week Three

This week for One Local Summer I had a near miss that turned into a delicious hit! I love making great tasting food that's from local producers and also healthy and paleo - gluten and dairy free.



The star of dinner tonight was a roasted chicken from Polyface Farms. I rinsed and dried the chicken and then generously salted and peppered it inside and out. The outside I wrapped in bacon from EcoFriendly Foods and the inside I stuffed with two of the season's first peaches from Westmoreland Berry Farm. Into the oven at 425 for 30 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 350 and roasted it for an additional hour.

The plan was to end up with delicious bacon-wrapped chicken and some roasty peach chunks. My oven had other plans!

Now, I've made bacon wrapped chicken before and it's always turned out, but this time for some reason the bacon shriveled to itty bitty bacon cinders and became inedible. So not only did I have burned bacon, but I had flabby chicken skin. Erg. I removed the peaches from the chicken and noticed they were not roasty at all either. My plans had been foiled, but I thought there had to be some way to salvage this food. After a moment's pondering I set the bacon cinders aside and carved the chicken into two leg quarters, two breasts, and two wings. I put the chicken pieces on a foil lined baking sheet and put them back in the oven to turn the flabby skin crispy. What to do with the peaches...aha! Gravy!

To make the gravy, I took the peaches from the chicken cavity and heated them in a small saucepan with a good spoonful of drippings from the roasting pan and 1/4 cup sweet white wine from Rose Bank Winery along with a pinch of salt and about 1 inch of cinnamon stick. I put the heat to low, covered it, and let it simmer while I went to work on the veggie sides. I don't know if Rose Bank Winery can be considered local to northern Virginia, but we used to live about 3 minutes away from this winery and we bought a whole case of the wine that we're still working on! So it was local to us at one point. :)

To get our leafy greens in for the day I made some braised kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. First I sauteed some baby onions from our CSA in the chicken/bacon drippings, then added the kale and a little water, covered, and let it braise for about 15 minutes.

To add some freshness to the meal, I made a quick cucumber salad using crispy little Persian cucumbers from Toigo Orchards. They are so snappy and delicious! I tossed them with some chopped orange mint from Red Rake Farm, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of rice vinegar. Red Rake Farm is one of my favorite stands at the Arlington Farmer's Market. It's all organic and their produce looks more "real" to me than some of the other places for some reason. And the owner, Peter, is always ready with a smile and story. Much nicer than shopping at a grocery store!



Once the veggies were ready, the chicken skin was crispy and the peaches were nice and broken down for the gravy, and dinner was served! I think everything tied together very nicely - the crispy chicken skin with the sweet warm peach gravy, the tender kale, and the cool fresh cucumbers. My husband even ate the bacon cinders and said they kind of tasted like pork rinds. Success!

One Local Summer - Week One

Back in April I signed up for the One Local Summer event over at Farm to Philly. I thought it would be a neat way to challenge myself to really use more local and seasonal ingredients in my cooking. I'm excited to see what northern Virginia has in store for me this summer! We were pretty busy this weekend, so my first local meal was a pretty basic brunch we had on Saturday morning before heading off for the day.



We had bacon, eggs, and fruit salad with whipped cream.

The bacon I picked up at the farmer's market from a kind of local farm aggregate called EcoFriendly Foods. It comes from pastured pigs and is cured with just salt and sugar. It was definitely the best local bacon I've had so far, but not quite as good as the local bacon we used to get when we lived in New Jersey from Cherry Grove Farm.

The eggs were from Joel Salatin's famous and fabulous Polyface Farm. I joined their buying club a few months ago. Every month I place an order with them and pick it up from one of their northern Virginia drop off spots. I cooked the delicious dark yolked eggs in some of the fat left over from cooking the bacon.

The fruit salad was strawberries from Toigo Orchards and some not-so-local peaches (they came from Georgia via Whole Foods). I would have left the peaches out happily, but they were in my fruit basket and going bad, so into the salad they went. To top our fruit I whipped a little heavy cream from J-Wen Farm. Selling raw milk is illegal in Virginia unless you go through a cow sharing program, but the stuff from J-Wen is not homogenized and is just pasteurized rather than ultrapasteurized. The fruit was so naturally sweet that the whipped cream didn't require any sugar. I don't eat very much dairy at all, but I just had a hankering this weekend so I picked the cream up at the farmer's market.

And there you have it!